Support pay-as-you-go solar in Timor-Leste

Your tax-deductible donation will help us provide support to bring light to approximately 3,000 people over an 18-month period and will help us to expand a new model of pay-as-you-go (PayGO) solar in Timor-Leste, supporting local enterprise and a proven model that can help light the way out of energy poverty for more of our Timorese neighbours.

Since 2006, Renew has been implementing a quasi-PayGO model in Timor Leste called the Village Lighting Scheme, providing energy access to over 2000 households. While households are not required to pay for the upfront cost of the solar systems, they do commit to paying $2.75 per month into a community-managed maintenance fund to ensure money is available for spare parts and end-of-life system replacement.

Under the PayGo model, a family is given the opportunity to pay for a solar home system over time using their savings on kerosene expenditure. Payments are made in a similar way to recharging credit on a pre-paid mobile phone by purchasing coupons to enter into the PayGo solar home system via a keypad. You can read more about this model in an article in Renew magazine which provides some good background on how PayGo works.

In 2018, Renew began supporting and monitoring a true PayGO pilot in the Baguia district in Timor Leste. The pilot is implemented by a local social enterprise called Ho Musan Ida (translated as With One Seed). The initiative was instigated by a Melbourne local, John Tilleard, who financed the pilot and provided training to Ho Musan Ida. The pilot was small—60 households, who pay $6.90 per month over 24 months for a Greenlight Planet Home 120 solar system. These households are six months into their repayments; 97% of households are up-to-date with payments, with the remaining 3% less than 10 days overdue. This is an impressive result considering Baguia is harshly impacted by the monsoon season from December to February, when both income and sunshine are scarce commodities!

One of the key advantages of the PayGo model is that your donation can be recycled; once a family has paid for their solar system that money can then used to light up more households.

Your donation will help fund the initial cost of the solar systems and assist Renew in building the capacity of a local Timorese social enterprise to implement the model as a business rather than a project. Our aim is to help develop a sustainable local energy business that can continue to operate after our support has ended.